


Madrid (the un año mas mix)

by narie



Category: Glee
Genre: M/M, Remix, madrid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-14
Updated: 2013-04-14
Packaged: 2017-12-08 09:07:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/759605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narie/pseuds/narie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Madrid is not like any of the other cities they have been to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Madrid (the un año mas mix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [knittywriter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/knittywriter/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Rome](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/20105) by knittywriter. 



> Don't let the note above fool you - this work is actually a remix of both [Rome](http://knittywriter.tumblr.com/post/31395222522/rome) and [France](http://knittywriter.tumblr.com/post/31457903584/france).
> 
> Remix subtitle comes from the Mecano song, Un año mas. 
> 
> _Many_ thanks to ileliberte and airgeer, beta readers supreme.

The sky above Madrid was the bluest Kurt had ever seen. Peering over Blaine he had seen yellow scrubland and a grey haze hanging low over the city from their tiny airplane window, and had felt himself fill with dread at spending weeks in such an unpretty land. But once on the ground, looking up, he was taken aback by the enormous cloudless expanse of sharp, crisp blue, a shade that brokered no insincerity. It had surprised them even more that first evening, flaring bright orange and pink as they sat in the small rooftop terrace of their rented apartment, adrift in a sea of orange clay gables and lighting rods, both of them still quieted and confused by jet lag. 

Before they began exploring the city Kurt had thought that maybe Madrid would remind him of Rome, and of that first trip they had taken together, and although they had not discussed it he suspected Blaine did too. But here the churches were sad and dark, and very soon he could tell that for Blaine too they lacked whatever magic they had held once; not even as they peered around the mighty Almudena early in their tour did he light a candle. All around there was little elegance, little charm to draw him in and hold his attention. Castile was a hard land, brittle and austere, and for all the wonders of her sky, Madrid was not an easy city to fall in love with. 

It was not, to be fair, entirely without allure, and they had marvelled at all the obvious things, at first, spending hours tracing Goya and Velázquez's careers through the echoing halls of the Prado, where Blaine also discovered a new passion for the gentle faces painted by Sorolla. An entire day also went moving slowly from work after work of Picasso's, at the Reina Sofía, and another at the Thyssen-Bornemisza, but the Palacio Real disappointed them after the opulence of other royal houses they had seen before. Madrid, they decided, was a city easily exhausted, rapidly reduced to relentless summer heat, its famous museums, and a truly endless series of bars and restaurants, each of them serving an equally infinite number of variations on that most Spanish of staples, the _tapa_. 

Some nights they would do like the locals did, waiting until the worst of the heat abated, and dressed in loose clothing that would stick to cheap plastic chairs whenever they lingered too long, amble their way from one _terraza_ to the next, staying just as long as it took all the ice cubes in Kurt's gin and tonic to melt and irreparably water his drink down. Blaine, usually more practical, drank beer, and in between thin slices of _chorizo_ that stained their fingers red with their grease, they would talk, and so pass their evenings.

-

Blaine knew that when they sat like this, in companionable silence outdoors in one of the small squares that littered their neighbourhood they were both actually trying to eavesdrop on whoever was sitting nearby. Sometimes they would confer with each other, and in between Kurt's rusting French and Blaine's nearly forgotten Italian they would make one word out of every many and play at who could imagine a more salacious remainder. It didn't help that the heavy, sharp tones of Castilian were different from most of the Spanish they had heard outside the Almodóvar series at the revival theatre; Blaine was pretty sure they hadn't come close to the truth of things very often.

He was playing the game, listening half-heartedly to a family two tables over talk with surprising delight about what maybe was someone's embarrassment at something, when Kurt said, "I think we're not understanding this city." 

"What do you mean?"

"I just think we've been doing it wrong. Everyone says Madrid is great, but all we've done so far is dodge stale trash, eat and drink. And sweat," he added, like a little afterthought. Blaine watched as his hands considered the paper napkin that had also served as a coaster, and dejectedly found it too soggy for any further use. 

"I think that's why people generally come to Madrid," Blaine pointed out. He reached into his pocket and proffered his handkerchief, which Kurt gratefully took. "The drinking and eating, I mean."

"Thanks -- but that's been underwhelming too, you have to admit. I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't this." Kurt insisted, dabbing at his brow with very precise motions Blaine made fun of sometimes, in their bathroom. But Kurt would always say something about comparing foreheads when they turned 50 and only one of them was starting to wrinkle unattractively, and then move onto applying his moisturiser with the brush that came with it. "We must be missing something. The travel guide made it sound more interesting."

Blaine leaned forward, then, and found his gaze caught by the motions of Kurt's fingers as they folded his handkerchief over carefully, absently pressing the folds down and smoothing all other creases. "What did you want?" 

"I really don't know. Sometimes I just feel like we're not in the same place as all of these people."

"I think we are," Blaine said with a light smile. "We're very much in the same hot, loud place."

"No disagreement there. I still believe we're not seeing the same things, though. But actually, I found out that there's an entire museum devoted to that painter you liked. We could visit it, if you wanted."

-

One morning they rode a train to Segovia, two hours rolling through suburbs and more of that ugly scrubland they had seen from the plane. As they stood in awe at the foot of the ancient Roman aqueduct, gently winding its way down from the hills, Kurt's thoughts returned to the first of these trips of theirs, so many by now. Time had tinted the memories of that summer a treasured hue, and Kurt smiled as he said, "It's an obvious comparison, but it makes me think of when we were in Rome."

"Me too," admitted Blaine. "It was a while ago," he added, after neither of them said anything for a while. 

"We were pretty young," Kurt eventually offered. At times it seemed like nothing, the decade they had spent together since then, but back home some nights they would flip through photo albums and scrapbooks from that trip, and of the ones that had come after, and it was impossible to ignore that time had relentlessly passed. Yet Kurt, an avid student of his own face, could not pinpoint when he'd exchanged the the last lingering remnants of adolescence he saw in those photographs for the full-grown man he undeniably had become, now so comfortably settled into his bones. 

"Pretty unmarried too," Blaine said, and there was also that. Standing in the crowded square, facing the aqueduct, he reached for Blaine's hand and squeezed it fondly, cherishing the feel of Blaine's wedding ring against the palm of his hand. 

The sun and heat in Segovia were still bold, but slightly less so than in Madrid, and so lunch became a late afternoon affair in the shade in a _terraza_ , after they had visited the _alcázar_ , and the cathedral. Blaine, as always, gravitated towards the children, who in all of Spain, seemingly, were loud and almost rude. Back in Madrid he would catch some shy five year old's eye two tables away every night, and make faces until she smiled, or pick up a confused toddler and help him dust his knees before he broke off into another waddling run back to his parents. And just like every night, Kurt watched him smile uninhibitedly at a girl in pigtails and a Disney dress while they waited for their entrées, and admitted to himself, this is a conversation we need to have. He saw the two of them, sitting in their little patio after the sun had set, with heat still lazily rising off the tiles and glasses of wine at hand, and he imagined the conversation unfold:

"Do you want us to have a child?" Kurt would ask, and Blaine's eyes would light up, widen in that way in which they did whenever something great and good loomed near. Because even though he was asking, Kurt was fairly sure he knew the answer, and although he could not predict the specific words he would use to reply he knew their quality, the way in which they would spill forth, overflowed with joy. But Kurt would have to interrupt Blaine, to disillusion him and say, "Because I'm not sure that I do. At least not now. I'm really sorry, because we've never seriously talked about this since we were 23, and we said it would be great once we had careers and success, but I see the way you look at them, and it frightens me, because I'm not ready at all and I don't know when I'm going to be. If I'm going to be." 

Kurt didn't want to think this would be their last trip together, the two of them in their own private world. Well meaning friends and family would tell him that it was simply his fear masquerading as something else, and that parenthood was something great, but as the reality of it had loomed closer through the years his dread, silently nurtured, had steadily grown. They were settled in their careers now, having reached the milestones they had set themselves, yet where years ago there had been enthusiasm and a hitch in his breath every time he saw Blaine surrounded by rugrats, nowadays Kurt could no more imagine himself a father than he could imagine himself a nun. 

It was irrational, he hoped, but Kurt loved his husband, and his life, and he was terrified that to avoid upsetting it, he would make it all clatter apart. 

-

Not every night was one to go out. On Monday and Tuesday the city's nights stilled somewhat, and they would choose to stay indoors. A couple of nights ago Kurt had improvised something like a _vichyssoise_ and he stood at the counter, chopping spring onions with which to garnish it while Blaine watched him, seated at the small kitchen table, idly playing with their tablet, sipping from the glass of unremarkable Rioja at his side. "I just got an email from my mother; she wants to call tomorrow."

"Everything ok?" 

"I don't know," Blaine said, and it was true. Their Christmas cards were addressed to _Mr. and Mr. Hummel-Anderson_ , and they treated Kurt with exactly the same courtesy and warmth they showed Cooper's wife, but as they grew older his parents had developed the strange ability to spend months at a time without remembering they had ever had children. These periods would only end when his mother was overcome by a sudden mania that necessitated almost-daily check-ins and in-depth descriptions of their dinner menus, day after day for two weeks until her parenting instincts quiesced for another half year. Blaine hoped he could stave this episode off, or deflect it to Cooper, far easier to reach back home. These trips were meant to be theirs, just Blaine and his husband trying out other cities, other people's lives, and by design there was never any room in them for anyone else. "She said she'd call as soon as she wakes up, so knowing her that'll be our noon. One at the latest." 

"That's fine. I can make lunch, there's not going to be enough food left tonight. Besides, I almost want to speak to her myself, I feel like you're the only person I've spoken to these two weeks." 

"You say it like it's a bad thing." 

"You know it's not, ever," Kurt replied, warmly. But then his grin turned impish and he added, "But winning all our arguments is getting old."

"Is that what you think you've been doing?" asked Blaine. 

"Isn't it? I haven't had to pour my own drinks since we got here, you've been extremely solicitous. " 

"Well, if our conversations are getting too boring there's always that girl at the produce stall in the market. She tries very hard to out-argue you." 

"She _does_ ," agreed Kurt. His chopping finished, he ran his hands under the tap for a couple of seconds, and Blaine watched him. He always scrubbed his hands with zeal, washing away leftover scents and anything else, but then he would dry his skin with an unfailingly gentle touch. In spite of the countless times Kurt had tried to teach him to pat dry, and not to rub, Blaine never quite remembered. Kurt said he was just too impatient for his own good, sometimes; Blaine simply did not particularly care. When Kurt joined him at the table, he stole Blaine's glass of wine. "But I prefer arguing with you. There's only so many times I can argue with someone about the price of onions, especially in a language I don't speak."

-

The following morning was slow and lazy, their day cloven in two by the prospect of Blaine's mother's call. Phone calls with her could either be blindingly brief or frustratingly long; unsure of what form this one would take they chose to stay in the apartment until it was over. They idled in bed, fingers and tongues lazily roaming across one another, and by the time they left the bedroom it had grown far too hot to turn on the stove and make crepes like they had talked about, so they skipped breakfast. Even after they had showered and dressed they coiled lazily around one another on the sofa; Blaine rested his head on Kurt's lap while he looked at fashion blogs, and when Kurt finally got up to begin making something for lunch he found the wilted contents of their small fridge uninspiring at best. 

Blaine, meanwhile, had picked up the discarded tablet and was reading a book on it; he barely looked up when Kurt said, "There is little other than a really sad lettuce in the fridge, so I'm going to go down to the market."

"Do you want me to start preparing anything?"

"Thanks, but no," Kurt answered. "I have no idea what we're going to make -- I know it sounds incredible, but we might've reached the limits of my cold soup knowledge, so we'll see what inspires me. Say hi for me?" 

"Mmm, ok." Blaine reached a hand towards him blindly, and Kurt trailed his fingertips over it on his way out. "I hope she doesn't want to talk for three hours again." 

It was late enough that when he reached the market most of the crowds he jostled with on other mornings had already been and gone. Kurt enjoyed ambling from stall to stall, taking his time letting his eyes wander over _charcuterie_ , or a spread of fresh, glistening turbot, sole, and cod, and not having to rush through his wants in broken Spanish; some busy mornings he had received glares more withering than even he was comfortable with. He pointed at the things he wanted, mimed when he needed no more, paid the vendors, and satisfied with his purchases followed a course back to the apartment exclusively through narrow, charmless streets. 

When he arrived Blaine was on the phone. He'd gone outside, into the patio, and was pacing back and forth. Kurt observed him through the glass and tried hard not to read his lips. However, it was impossible not to notice that the conversation was unpleasant, somehow; Kurt could not suddenly unlearn the familiarity of years, the way by now their mannerisms telegraphed to each other everything, even those things they may have wished to keep secret. Blaine's movements were both angry and wounded, and Kurt tried not to imagine what could be causing them, because Blaine would most likely tell him as soon as the call was through. He rapped his knuckles against the glass door and waved hello at his husband, who acknowledged him with a quick nod, before turning away to lean against the parapet and speak some more into the phone. 

Although the kitchen was laid out completely differently to the one in their apartment in New York, it had taken Kurt very little time to become familiar with it. Where Blaine was still unsure where to put the clean dishes, Kurt was already trying to decide if it would be too presumptuous to rearrange everything before they left in a manner that was far more logical and sensible than their hostess' current system. He washed and laid out his ingredients - semolina, red ripe tomatoes, a firm cucumber, two small onions, a big, bright lemon, parsley, and a thick, fragrant bunch of mint, leaves far coarser and bigger than back home, all of it intended for just a basic _tabbouleh_ \- in front of him and began to chop, singing gently to himself.

He did not hear the patio door open, or Blaine approach, until he said, "My parents got a divorce." His knife halfway through a slice of cucumber, he stilled, turning around. Blaine stood at the threshold, one hand tightly gripping the door frame, and his eyes were dulled. "It was finalised yesterday," he added, with a note of incredulity. 

The knife thudded as it came down on the wooden chopping board, and the sound startled Kurt into action. He wiped his hands dry on his apron and rushed to Blaine, prying his fingers loose and catching him as he sagged forward. He did not allow himself to think beyond the immediate, gathering Blaine in his arms and pulling him into a tight hug. "Oh, _Blaine_. I'm so sorry. Come here. Did you know anything about this?"

"No," Blaine replied. "I would've told you."

"That's not why I'm asking, honey," Kurt said, shushing him gently. There was no good way to find out about your parents' divorce, Kurt suspected; there was probably no good way to learn about the dissolution of most marriages, but paperwork like that took time, and Blaine's parents possessing either the malice or absentmindedness to keep such a secret for so long made him ache for his overly earnest husband, so very much the opposite of them. He tugged Blaine gently towards the living room, sitting down on the sofa, and curled himself around him. "What do you need?"

"I don't know. Nothing," Blaine slowly said. He seemed to be becoming smaller in Kurt's grip, shrinking and disappearing; Kurt had seen Blaine sink into himself like this before a couple of times, in some of their darkest days, and for a fleeting, irrational moment he was terrified that he would keep on diminishing until he became small enough to slip through Kurt's fingers. But Blaine remained solid and warm, in Kurt's arms, and they stayed like that, Blaine staring unseeing ahead while Kurt stroked his arm up and down his back, listening to the sounds of city through the patio door that Blaine had left open in his daze.

When he felt a bit of strength return to Blaine's spine, a return of firmness to his eerily pliable form, Kurt asked, "Do you want to talk about it?" 

"Not now."

"That's fine. We don't have to. We can just stay here." He stroked again to emphasise his point, and his movements morphed into a real hug. 

"I, just. Kurt, I..."

"I know. Me too," Kurt said. After all this time together there was little need to actually say the words; they could tell each other things in so many other ways. 

-

Because thinking about it made anger and confusion roil inside of him, Blaine resolutely chose to ignore his parents' divorce over the following days. Whatever interest he had still had in sightseeing disappeared, and over the next few days his world narrowed to their small rented apartment and Kurt near him. Touching Kurt, being with Kurt, listening to Kurt, watching Kurt, those were the main things he was concerned with, and if Kurt noticed his need for closeness -- holding hands over tables, pressing against each other as they walked on the street -- he chose not to comment, he did nothing different.

Blaine had little difficulty pushing the issue out of his mind. All he had to do was remind himself that this was a holiday just for the two of them, and that for all that the city had failed to enchant or seduce them they would be here for another two weeks, while at the same time a friend of one of Blaine's colleagues had taken over their own apartment back home and Kurt's assistant managed the day to day of his fledgling career as a fashion mogul. Letting go of their real lives was easy enough, even if some mornings Blaine woke up thinking of lesson plans, and he had seen Kurt sit down with his sketchpad more than once.

During lazy evenings spent in comfortable silence, Blaine stopped listening to the conversations around him and catalogued instead all the pieces of knowledge he had acquired over the years about Kurt. He knew from the beginning that the length of their relationship already made it an impossible task; even when he made allowances for all the things that had fallen through the cracks in his memory, by now there were too many things he knew about Kurt to be able to systematically go through all of them. The act of it kept him occupied, feeling grounded and tethered as he recalled unordered versions of Kurt: Kurt graduating in an outfit of his own design; Kurt trying not to cry while chopping onions at home; Kurt adoringly listening to him that one morning in Paris. 

Between the language and the unforgiving heat they took to also spending the height of the afternoon indoors, a lazy redolent time in a stilled city. They kept the windows open in vain hope of enticing a breeze to blow through their tiny apartment, but all that would fly in was silence. It was August now, and the city had emptied, they realised, many of her inhabitants gone to the sea or to the mountains, anywhere far from the harsh Castilian sun that bleached everything bone-white. And in the afternoon stillness they would sometimes fuck lazily, and marvel; one of them would comment, "New York would never be this quiet." It was this, more than anything else, that lent those final weeks their rhythm. After three unsuccessful trips to buy Spanish music they gave up and put on Connie Francis, or Dean Martin, or that one cd of old Cuban rumba neither of them remembering buying but was in both their iPods all the same, and take each other's clothes off to the rhythm of the day. 

Yet no matter how much Blaine argued the merits of staying in bed they still left the apartment often, but their wanderings were now quieter, and far less purposeful. Kurt took him to a park one day, ample wide avenues lined with trees and flower beds that had once aspired to be _parterres_. Even there Blaine observed Kurt, who resolutely did not allow himself to wilt under the glare of the sun, but who side-stepped and narrowed his eyes when two children came barrelling towards them, shrieking loudly and flinging water balloons at each other. They sought refuge from the heat under unexpected cedar eaves, but in Madrid the summer was inescapable, and the parched soil brought little solace. 

All their comforts they had to procure themselves.

-

In the mornings, before the sun rose too high and baked everything with its terrible mighty heat, Kurt would step outside, into the little patio that had sold them on the apartment, spread a beach towel on the floor and do two or three sun salutations and a scattering of other poses. The first few days he had done them in the evenings, in the comfort of the slight breeze that sometimes picked up after the sun set, but trying to hold half moon while tipsy was difficult, not to mention a waste of the friskiness alcohol still brought out in Blaine. He had finished reconciling himself to the idea of doing yoga in the daytime once it dawned on him that it wasn't much different from doing bikram back in New York, except far cheaper.

He rose from shavasana to find Blaine - who had taken to sleeping late - standing against the glass door, a contemplative air to his posture. "Were you staring?" he teased lightly, shaking the towel out, and noticed with satisfaction that although Blaine was leaning against the door both of his hands were off it, and would leave no smudged prints behind. That had been a long lesson to learn. 

"I worry about you, that's all. Some of those poses look painful." Blaine replied. 

It was a familiar argument, and they settled into it with ease. Kurt smiled as he said, "They wouldn't be if you'd join me." 

"They're the reason I don't join you."

Kurt folded the towel, smoothing it down every time he brought corners together. He drank deeply from the water glass he always brought outside and said, "Suit yourself. One day you won't be able to bend over to tie your boat shoes, and you know I don't hate saying 'I told you so.'"

"You'll have to help me tie them. And then I'll get to leer at you, old man that I'll be."

" _Dirty_ old man," corrected Kurt.

"It's not dirty if I'm ogling my husband. Who I hope will ogle me right back."

Blaine slid the door open, and Kurt kissed his cheek as he slipped indoors. "He probably will."

Generally Kurt showered straight after exercising, but Blaine had set out breakfast, laying out granola, some yogurt, and a peach for each of them; even the small espresso coffee maker was prepared, already on the stove. He had also managed to find a second small paring knife, so they would not have to share, like they had been doing until that point. Kurt was impressed; once the shock of his mother's phone call had passed Blaine had chosen to act like it had never even happened, but it had clearly sapped him of most of his energy and joy, bundling him in taciturn lethargy instead. 

"I want to see some flamenco," Blaine said as they ate. "I did some looking on the internet and found a place that we should go to."

"Sounds great," Kurt replied. He was delighted to see Blaine suggest something for them to do again. "When did you want to go?"

"Tonight?"

-

The _tablao_ Blaine had found turned out to be a crowded small bar with arabesque tiles on the walls and a small, dark stage at the back. They ate a mediocre dinner first, and then, once the plates had been cleared away and they were sipping on some _fino_ that had been wordlessly brought to them by their waiter, a group of men and women took to the stage. The women had their hair pulled into small tight buns, and their dresses, although long and full, were simple and free of the frippery Blaine had come to expect. Most of the men were dressed equally plainly, with the exception of one, who did not immediately take a seat on one of the chairs pushed against the back of the stage. He wore a white suit, and a pocket square the same electric blue shade as his shoes. At his side, Blaine heard Kurt hum in appreciation. 

Without warning two of the men started clapping, setting up a cadence, and were joined by a third one playing a well-worn acoustic guitar. Both Kurt and him were keen students of music, but Blaine tried not to listen for structure or tone and instead simply enjoy; it was hard for him sometimes to pull back like that but tonight he was determined to succeed. When one of the two women stood up and began to sing it became impossible to miss the plaintive longing of the song. There was nothing sultry or seductive to her voice, only low, deep and powerful tones that at times resembled more a wail than any given tongue, but the moment she began the rest of the music shifted, building around her and her formidable skill. 

Halfway through her first piece the man in the white suit moved to the front of the stage and began to dance, and Blaine could not help but gasp. His movements were theatrical, sudden and unpredictable, but not for that devoid of grace; when he was joined by the second woman they told elaborate tales of seduction and betrayal only with the angle of their arms and the stomping of their feet. By the end of the first set he had shed his suit jacket and put it back on, and loosened his silk scarf; his hair, initially meticulously styled and combed back, had succumbed to the dance.

Eventually the music - and the crowd - grew more jovial, louder and faster; the spaces between songs were now filled with quick-fire conversation that had the audience laughing and occasionally replying to whatever the singers said, while he and Kurt sat in an ignorant stillness. The dancing flowed from dramatic and sorrowful to flirtatious and back again, but stitching the entire night together, at the heart of it all, was the woman singing, and the man in the white suit dancing. 

They had not made a habit of late nights on this trip, and so were astounded to find the city still pulsed with life when the house lights came up. The lines at taxi banks were long, longer in fact than any they had seen at any other time, and the air was finally cool enough to enjoy being outdoors. The streets still crowded, light and noise spilling out of bar after bar. Surprised, they began to walk home. 

"What did you think? I loved everything, but above all for me it was the way the woman sang," Blaine raved. Echoes of the music and the man in the white suit, dancing, the way his feet nearly became a blur when the pace quickened, and weaving through it all the woman's deep, low voice, were still throbbing in his mind. Remembering almost made Blaine shudder; this was not what he had expected to discover when he had suggested their night out. He had thought they would be getting an evening of folklore, tortoise shell hair combs and big polka dots, no more than another story to tell back home. Suddenly Blaine wanted to make music above all, to take all of the feelings coiled still and tight inside of him and distil them into notes and chords and tones before they were gone. When they returned to New York, he promised himself, he would attempt to pick up the guitar again; there was an acoustic one boxed in by Kurt's winter wardrobe underneath their bed, hopefully not yet warped beyond repair.

But Kurt said, "It was amazing, except the singing. I really didn't like that at all." 

"Are you kidding? That was the best part!" Blaine exclaimed. "I want to buy some music, actually." 

Kurt stopped walking and turned instead, and fixed him with a steely gaze. "Only the guitar. And the clapping."

"I'm going to find out her name and buy whatever there is of her," insisted Blaine. "But I'll see if there's any with only the guitar and the clapping for you. And we should come back. I finally felt like we were seeing something special and unique, like we were really seeing Madrid."

"Me too," agreed Kurt. They exited a small side street, leaving it behind it for a wider one full of people and cars. For all that he had read about it in advance, and expected it, the midday stillness, the way the city slowed down and businesses drew their shutters down at the height of day, had still unsettled Blaine. Now, faced with the bustle of Madrid's late night, he was equally taken aback. It was not limited to a single area - or perhaps as they ambled it followed them along? But it was one in the morning and every bar they passed still had lights on, and there were still children playing about, and it was clear that for many of the people whose path they crossed the night had only just begun. 

"We should go somewhere else," Kurt said. "All these people are making me feel like it's far too early to go home!"

Blaine agreed. They ducked into a bar, and while they drank they lost themselves in the crowd, not talking to each other, but instead taking in all the sounds. 

-

Madrid was not like any of the cities they had been to before - Tokyo, like stepping sideways into another dimension, when Kurt's work took him there one spring; five frustrating days in São Paulo last year for the same cause; ten days in a cramped terrace near Hampstead Heath; Paris again the year before, like returning home... Some of them had been cities where he felt immediately at ease, where either him or Blaine could blend in seamlessly into the streets and step effortlessly into a new life.

Here they would walk through their neighbourhood, a place of narrow alleys and long shadows, and, of old, also of writers and poets much fêted here, but wholly new to the two of them. And it had come to Kurt all of a sudden that all of Madrid was like that; it was maybe not so much shallow and lacking in substance, but rather a place held together by a fabric he could not quite make out, because he had never truly seen it before. Only since the other night, seeing it bright and alive as they walked home, had it begun to seem less incomprehensible. It had bared its heart to them, its love of life and passion, but Kurt resented that it had taken an expensive bargain to reach the point. Blaine had regained his energy and enthusiasm after the night at the _tablao_ , but some of his carefree manner, Kurt feared, had been lost. He still often wanted to stay home, wrapped up each other ignoring the outside world, but seclusion was not what they had come all this way for, and Kurt could no more bear the confines of their rented home that he could spend the entire day out in the sun, so he came up with a plan. 

"I have decided that, since all we do here is eat, we're going to start doing it well," he announced when they had little over a week to go. "So no more random _tapas_ bars, and _definitely_ no more dinners at flamenco bars."

"It was not _that_ bad," Blaine protested.

"We can have better. And we should have been having better from the start."

It had been a mistake to assume that just because many _tapas_ were simple there would not be much difference between them, and Kurt, consummate believer in quality ingredients that he was, really should have known better. He applied himself diligently to the task at hand, cross-referencing multiple online reviews sites, and came up with a list of places to visit that would keep them entertained and well-fed until they left, ranging from a gin and tonic at sunset on the tenth floor terrace of a hotel to small modern restaurants where the chef did whatever he wanted to the catch of the day. It was at one of those, over dessert - a saffron _pana cotta_ for Blaine, a quince _soufflé_ for Kurt - that Kurt took Blaine's free hand and carefully said, "We still haven't talked about your parents."

"There's nothing to talk about."

"What? Blaine, no--"

"There is nothing to say. That's what my mother told me. She said it was amicable. No court visits, no lawyers, he agreed to pay alimony and she's moving back east to be with her sister for now. I emailed Cooper and they hadn't told him in advance either, so at least there's that," Blaine spat, keeping his voice low. He blinked, his eyes staying shut just a fraction too long, and breathed. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to snap at you. I just... When I asked her why they hadn't told us anything she said that it was a private decision, and that since both me and Cooper were over eighteen and no longer living at home they saw no need to involve us anyhow. Because families apparently end when you move out." 

That the divorce had affected Blaine Kurt had already known, of course, but the anger in his tone took him aback. Ever since the phone call Blaine's eyes had strayed to every toddler, to every family, that crossed their path, his lips curling downwards whenever they appeared to lead anything but the happiest of lives. Their interactions threatened to become a labyrinthine tangle of crossed gazes, Kurt watching Blaine watching Kurt watching Blaine watching a child smear ice cream all over his Sunday best. His intensity was beginning to overwhelm Kurt - the only safe place, it sometimes seemed, was alone indoors. "I know you're upset at them, but you know that's not true, right? You have a family, and they love you."

"Yes," Blaine sighed. His hand flopped tiredly onto the table, dessert spoon clattering away, and Kurt could do nothing other than reach for it and hold it between his own. "I just wish they did too... I know you wanted to go somewhere else, but do you mind just paying and going home?"

"No," Kurt said, "of course I don't."

That night, Blaine still tasted like heady, spiced cream when they kissed. He had never tasted like that before. And then Kurt found himself thinking of all the flavours Blaine would never taste like again, and of all the kisses they would never have. Blaine had tasted of red wine on countless different nights, but hardly ever of white, because he did not like it as much, and during their trip Kurt had delighted in teasing out notes in their kisses he had never found before. But beneath all of those Blaine tasted like, and always there lingered, that core of warmth, of man - some years ago, of boy - of all the dark and fundamental things that Kurt had always liked. 

He could not stop himself from wondering what it would be like if they had a child, whether he would suddenly become overwhelmingly powdery and clean, or start tasting of whatever else happy young children - because how could Blaine's child be anything else? - smelled like. Feeling his thoughts begin to spiral, he shifted in bed, pushing himself up with one arm, and kissed Blaine one more time. 

"What was that for?" he drowsily asked. 

"Just thinking about you," Kurt replied, "and how much I love you."

-

In those final days Kurt decided what they ate, and when, and it fell to Blaine to fill the rest of their time. They went back to the _tablao_ more than once. Some nights it would be just two men, one singing and one absorbed in his guitar and others it'd be the same group as the first night, women and men both singing and dancing and clapping and playing everything up to a _cajón_.

"I really do like it better when they don't sing," Kurt leaned over and whispered drunkenly. Blaine laughed, quick and pulled him close, shushing him. A tipsy Kurt was never as quiet as he thought , so Blaine took him home, another late night walk through crowded streets. 

Kurt was making the best of their limited time, dragging Blaine from place to place in the pursuit of edible delights. Cava at a rooftop bar at sunset, hard cider brewed to be flat, and too many dishes with untranslated names that Blaine did not understand, and that Kurt would then rave about. He vetoed all of their usual _terrazas_ and started pushing them further, riding the Metro to previously unexplored parts in search of a sumptuous this, or a mouth-watering that. For the most part, Blaine found his choices apt, with the exception of the night they spent at the low-end offering from Madrid's long-delayed answer to Ferran Adrià.

One afternoon Blaine took them, heedless of the heat, on a walk through their neighbourhood, wandering down its narrow streets until they arrived at a large plaza, a bustling semicircle of austere off-white façades and hard cement. There was nothing charming about it, nothing other than the relentless dourness of a city that seemed to have long ago forgotten most of its trees, but Blaine searched on his phone and read. "This is where they celebrate New Year's Eve. "

Kurt looked around, and Blaine could spot his disapproval in the cant of his hip, and in the length of his back. "I'll say Times Square has it beat," he said. 

"I'm not so sure -- you've seen how they get here when the sun goes down," Blaine said. He scrolled on his phone. "Apparently they eat twelve grapes, one with each stroke of the clock. It's supposed to be good luck in the new year and all that."

"I'll pass. I like Madrid - _now_ \- but I don't think I want to come back. It may be Europe but it's not London, or Rome, or Paris." 

"No, I agree," Blaine said, relieved. What had really worried him, at first, was that Kurt would fall in love with this city like he had with others before. He couldn't see Kurt in the treeless, dusty streets, or in any of the drab outfits that crossed their path, so for all that the trip had been a disappointment in some ways, it had also been a relief. Madrid had been an experiment, and they had both known that stepping outside their lives for an entire month was a risk. For a few seconds Blaine allowed himself to wonder what their stay would have been like, had one of them spoken Spanish, but even then he couldn't fully imagine either of them fitting in. "I'm very glad we finally got to _really_ see it, but next year we'll go somewhere else."

-

Less than a handful of days remained. Kurt had started taking notes in the final pages of his sketchbook, deconstructing dishes they had eaten to recreate them back home. Their conversation had become flighty and flirty again, light with gentle jokes, but Kurt remained constantly aware of the weight of his words, and did his best to help Blaine steer away from thoughts of his parents. It was easy most of the time, surrounded by people whose lives and individual sadnesses they were not privy to, and Kurt focused on the rhythm of Madrid, the ebb and flow of days and meals and heat. 

"This place is going to have food that tastes like it looks right?" Blaine asked playfully. "Not like the other night?"

"I should've known better than to take us there," Kurt replied. "Nothing other than flair."

"You say that like you didn't make me buy you that molecular gastronomy kit for your birthday four years ago, Kurt." 

Kurt narrowed his eyes. "I thought we agreed never to mention that again. I apologised to you for what I did to those quail eggs, what else do you want? Anyway I promise this place is going to be great. Especially the dessert - the entirety of my secret informer network raves about that."

"Tripadvisor?"

"No," Kurt replied, trying to drawl enigmatically. He did not want to dispel the mystery by admitting to hours browsing some bowdlerised version of the internet with his browser's translator on. 

The restaurant, when they reached it, revealed itself to be a tiny place, only five or six small café tables in a single front room. Airs of French _bistro_ for updated Spanish fare made for a strange atmosphere, but it did give Kurt the opportunity to occasionally sneak a glance at his reflection in the aged mirror and congratulate himself on another exceptionally well chosen ensemble. Dressing for the season had proved harder here than he'd thought, with so much of life being lived outdoors. 

On the mirror he could also see the rest of the restaurant, and, his gaze darting from there to Blaine's face, he could see him watching one of the other tables, a mother and a father arguing quietly over something, with a poised calm girl in that mysterious age range, somewhere between seven and twelve - Kurt could never tell. This was nothing new, of course, and he was unsure why this time, of all, it made him remember Blaine swarmed by children in Rome, that joyous glow in his eyes. If he tried he could also recall the way he'd felt, watching them, instead of how unsettled it made him these days. And then Blaine tore his gaze away from her and said, "If we ever were to get divorced promise me we won't tell our kids the day after?"

-

Blaine knew the moment he spoke that something had just gone terribly wrong. Kurt had flinched at his words, becoming wide-eyed and completely still. "That's a very big if," he eventually replied, and through the rest of the meal wouldn't be drawn on the subject any more. He spent it instead composing himself under Blaine's gaze, burying whatever it was further down with each bite until he was merry and jovial again. But Blaine could not as easily forget the look on his face or the lengthy silence that had ensued, and their meal became strained.

Walking back, he reached for Kurt's hand, and was relieved to find Kurt did not pull away. If anything, he stood closer to Blaine than he normally did as they waited for the subway, nearly crowding him. Their closeness lasted the entire journey home, Kurt constantly at his side, his eyes not straying to a store display a single time, and a hand on the small of his back as they climbed up the stairs. Blaine was so soothed by his touch that he tried not to think about where it had come from, or about how he could not tell for whose comfort it was meant. 

It did, however, stop the moment they shut their door. Kurt headed for the bathroom and Blaine busied himself with the stove-top coffee maker, packing the funnel, filling the reservoir with water and setting out two little espresso cups and the sugar bowl on a equally little tray. Small shots of espresso were a taste they had acquired in Italy years ago, as a way of truly finishing a meal off. Once the coffee was brewed he poured it and took it to the living room, where he found Kurt half-heartedly leafing through a magazine.

"Here," Blaine said, placing the tray down. "Now, please, tell me what's wrong."

"Nothing," Kurt said, and even if Blaine had not been there at the restaurant he would have known it was a lie. His nose was red, and he was blinking too fast, and Blaine could see him struggle to control his quivering breath. 

"It wasn't nothing," Blaine urged. "Please tell me, because I mention divorce and you become pale and withdrawn, and you have no idea how much that terrifies me, Kurt."

"It's not divorce," he immediately replied. Kurt turned, his entire body facing Blaine, and collapsed forward with some intent. Blaine opened his arms and caught him, pulling him closer until they were flush, heads cradled on each other's shoulders, chest against chest. He could feel Kurt's panic in the rapid rise and fall of his ribs against his arms. "Don't you ever think that - if it's up to me, I'm never letting you go!" 

"Then what was it? Tell me, please," he pleaded one more time. 

Kurt nosed further into Blaine's neck. He then began babbling, a stream of muffled words Blaine could not initially parse: "--and I know they do things these days with stem cells or something like that and I thought I was ready and I know you want some and--"

"Kurt." Arms still wrapped around him he shifted back enough that they could see each other's face. Blaine did not quite know what to make of Kurt's outburst , but now that he thought he'd found the thread linking Kurt's words, he was not sure he could continue this conversation without looking at Kurt, for all that he was unwilling to meet Blaine's gaze. "Kurt, _slow down_. Are you talking about kids? What brought this on?"

"I see you with them." Kurt said, "I know you want them."

"And you don't?" Blaine ensured his question was gentle, anything but accusatory or betrayed in tone, but Kurt still flinched. "For how long?

"A while," he reluctantly admitted. "I don't know."

Blaine reeled back, stunned. They hadn't talked about it much, and certainly not for a long time, and this was not the manner in which the conversation had previously gone. Kurt's statement hung between them for a few seconds, the silence growing heavy and thick. "Why didn't you say something?"

"Isn't that what everyone assumes? First they bet on whether our wedding would be Bambi or Gaga themed, now they're probably already betting on who'll be the father and what Broadway legend we'll name our child after!"

It was true that there had been a few betting pools of dubious taste shortly after they became engaged, but neither Blaine nor Kurt had thought them tasteless in the day; accepting instead that some of their friends had curious ways to express any affection they felt. Cautiously he asked, "Do you not want children ever, or do you just not want them now?"

"I don't know," Kurt said. "All I know is that I'm not ready and I don't know how much longer you're going to be willing to wait." 

"We're still young. Nothing says we have to have a child right now."

"But what if I'm never ready? You want a family, I know you do."

"I do," Blaine admitted readily. It was something he had known with certainty since he was surprisingly young, that he liked children and in spite of all the difficulties surrounding it, that he would one day want to have at least one of his own. He had been picturing himself, or the two of them, furnishing a small nursery in a new apartment, choosing someone's first bicycle and school books, maybe meeting a child in foster care, and although the specifics had always been somewhat hazy, these images had all been long present in his mind. "And I always thought you did too, but even if now you don't, I believe that we'd get through it; I believe in us."

"I'm scared I'm going to lose you if we don't," Kurt murmured. Throughout their conversation he had struggled not to cry, blinking to clear his gaze, but after his confession two fat tears slipped down his face. Again Blaine wrapped his arms tight around him, and again Kurt tucked his face into the space between Blaine's shoulder and neck. From there his silent tears trickled down his temple onto Blaine's skin, and his wet and clumpy eyelashes swept up and down with every blink. 

"Kurt," said Blaine, "I love you so much. We'll talk about it later, but I would never leave you over this. We're a family already, and even if it's just the two of us, we'll always be."

-

In two days, they'd be gone. Blaine loosened his hold as Kurt shifted into a more comfortable pose, and neither of them had a tissue for Kurt to blow his nose. In silent accord they rose and exited to the patio, where they sat, leaning against each other and clasping hands. They listened to the city, and watched the sky shift from blue to orange to purple to black, both of them thinking, right now there's no place I'd rather be.

**Author's Note:**

> A couple of links:
> 
> \- [The apartment, sort of](https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/236468). The patio is right, anyhow, and I also kept the address.  
> \- [Some flamenco](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCttgbl49eE). I borrowed his outfit for the story, but not the performance itself.  
> \- [More flamenco](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTebKpnG06E). This is how the woman at the _tablao_ sings.


End file.
